Each Monday, Spacing.ca is posting articles to the Spacing Archives. This week’s piece is a comparison of Toronto and Melbourne, Australia’s LRT systems. Spacing contributor Ian Malczewski spent a year living Down Under and thinks the former penal colony can teach us a few things about tweaking our streetcars. Here’s one tidbit to get you going:
In Melbourne, riding trams is an essential part of the city experience, a fact of which city planners are well aware. The City Circle Tram is a free tram that runs in a loop around the the downtown core during daylight hours. The vintage trams are refurbished W-class trams, some of the oldest in the city, and a recorded voice narrates the history of the buildings and locations as you pass them. When my brother visited me, riding the City Circle Tram was one of the first things we did together. Meanwhile, in Toronto, the beautiful PCC cars that were the face of the TTC for 60 years have been harvested for parts, scrapped, or sold off to places like Trolleyville, Ohio.
3 comments
On the topic of the “Wait Times”, it’s already been implemented in a transit system in the GTA – York Region Transit’s VIVA network, and it’s been a real benefit for whenever I’ve used it.
the wait times idea is spot on, in Chicago the El stations and buses have a screen posting the arrival of the next bus…and this is in a system equally as cash strapped as the TTC. The difference? Perhaps it’s because Illinois pays a considerable chunk of the costs, not the stagnant tax base of the City of Chicago.
On the idea of keeping around a tourist trolly: horrible idea. Nothing against tourists or new revenue for the TTC but such trams can often spell the end of the utilitarian nature of streetcars. Just look at San Francisco and how its streetcars are nothing but a $6 tourist trap now. The restuarant tram would just slow down traffic for wealthy tourists to gawk at Parkdale and Cabbagetown.
It’s a shame that this article spends so much time fantasizing on a possible Toronto restaurant car, and much less on the way that Melbourne has embraced its tram/LRT system.
I too miss the PCC cars and my heart is warmed whenever one passes by, but the real issue here is that Toronto always finds excuses to do as little as possible with the streetcar network and LRT expansion.